The First Sunlit Day
by runnerman87
Summary: Ginny finds Harry on the grounds following Sirius' death, and he asks her about his possession by Voldemort. Order of the Phoenix missing moment. Rated for implied character death.


The First Sunlit Day

_"Oh," said Hagrid, looking rather upset. "Oh, all righ' then, Harry...Take care of yerself then, an' drop back in if yeh've got a mo'..."_

_"Yeah...right..."_

_Harry crossed to the door as fast as he could and pulled it open. He was back out in the sunshine again before Hagrid had finished saying goodbye, and walked away across the lawn. Once again, people called out to him as he passed, and he closed his eyes for a few moments, wishing they would all just vanish, that he could open his eyes and find himself alone on the grounds..._

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, US Edition, p.855

* * *

Harry wandered distractedly away from the shouting voices vying for his attention. He had no idea what to do with himself, and that worried him. When he had company he wanted to be alone, and when he was alone he wanted company. It was all terribly confusing. He was certain that there was something he was supposed to be doing, but he didn't know what, and the thought frustrated him. He meandered through shrubs and scrub grass for quite some time, skirting the edge of the Forbidden Forest, and before he realized it he had walked nearly half way around the lake.

When he finally looked around again, Harry realized that he had wandered to the exact spot where he had unleashed his impressive Patronus two years earlier. That night had been one of his best, despite its dreadful start. For nearly an hour he had believed that he had found a real home and a family that wanted him. He knew now that Dumbledore would almost certainly have forbidden him to move in with Sirius, but the point had been rendered moot when Harry failed to re-capture Pettigrew, leading inexorably to his horrible experience in the graveyard a year later. The night of Remus' transformation had been the first time Harry had failed his godfather, but it was not the last. His breath left him as the insistent memory stirred thoughts of Sirius and reminded him of everything he had lost. He stumbled to a nearby tree and sat with his back against the trunk, weeping openly. Years of ingrained habits from living with the Dursleys had compelled him to bottle up his grief and try to present a strong face to his friends, but with no one nearby to witness his breakdown, he allowed himself to openly mourn his godfather for the first time.

Harry cried for nearly five minutes, wailing only softly in an attempt to retain his privacy. He even gave a few undignified snorts as his nose ran with shed tears. He felt stifled by the crushing weight of his grief and the guilt that his gullibility had led to Sirius' death. When his grief finally subsided to the occasional sniffle and then into silence, Harry felt oddly lighter. It was as if the great burden he bore had been lessened slightly, and he was grateful for the respite. Something told him that this feeling of relief would not last, but for the moment he allowed himself to relax.

He looked out over the world spread before him in an idyllic portrait of a carefree, highland summer. Several groups of first- and second-years frolicked on the lawn next to the far side of the lake, and he noticed that several of the older students had gone swimming. There was even an enthusiastic round of chicken fights taking place. He imagined Sirius playing in the grass as Padfoot with the younger students or charging into the water to disrupt the fun of the couples there. He thought that perhaps this would have been Sirius' idea of heaven, and he found the idea strangely comforting. He smiled a sad smile and shed a few more tears, but this time they were tears of love and longing and not of overwhelming grief, and Harry was able to relax enough that he could simply sit there and soak up the warm Scottish sun. He even dozed a bit.

He was startled awake some time later by a soft thump as someone settled and sat down beside him and leaned against Harry's tree trunk. He felt the intruder's shoulder press lightly against his own, and he was strangely comforted by the physical contact, as though the support that he had been denying himself had finally arrived. He was surprised to look to his left and see that it wasn't Hermione or even Ron who had found him, but Ginny.

"Hi, Harry."

Harry quickly turned away from the redhead sitting beside him, trying to hide the evidence that he had recently been crying. Instead, he let his gaze wander over the antics of the other students on the far side of the lake before responding, "Hey, Ginny."

"You're a hard man to find. D'ya know that?" Harry got the feeling that Ginny was slightly amused at his disappearance onto the grounds, but he wasn't sure why. He regarded her warily out of the corner of his eye, half expecting her to be angry with him like she had been the previous Christmas when he had tried to shut everyone out, but all he saw was casual good humor and calm acceptance. He couldn't help but let her in, even if only a little.

"Can't say as I really wanted to be found." There was no edge to Harry's voice as he spoke, no hint of accusation, but Ginny looked hurt regardless. She squashed the look ruthlessly, despite the fact that Harry had not yet turned to meet her eyes. She seemed to resign herself to being shunted to the side once again, but Harry turned to her and added, almost as an afterthought, "Thanks, though...How'd you manage it?"

Ginny's body language changed immediately from angry and slightly depressed and she looked smug instead. She smiled a mysterious, feminine smile and said, A girl has to have some secrets, Harry."

Harry chuckled, and was shocked to find that he was able. If anyone had asked him, Harry would never have been able to explain why he felt so oddly comfortable with Ginny. Something told him that she'd never try unabashedly to make him feel better the way Ron or Hagrid, bless his gentle soul, would. She'd never press him for answers or insist that he grieve the way the books said he should either, as Hermione might do. Perhaps without realizing it, Ginny knew exactly how to get through to Harry. She allowed him to have company and to be alone at the same time, and for the first time in a long while, Harry felt at home.

They sat in companionable silence for a long time, staring across the water and basking in the afternoon sun. Harry even allowed himself to doze again, something he would not have expected to do in company any time soon. His sleepy, incoherent thoughts drifted slowly across a multitude of subjects until he once again remembered his confrontation with Ron, Hermione and Ginny at Christmas. Somehow she had understood him perfectly and managed to pull him out of his funk with a few furious words and the unspoken threat of a painful hex.

At the memory of that conversation, Harry sat bolt upright. His back went rigid and mind screamed with worry. She had told him that he would have lost chunks of time if he'd been possessed, and it made perfect sense then. Now, however, he knew that something had been very wrong about it. Harry had been painfully, horribly aware of everything that was happening when Voldemort possessed him, and the memory was etched on his soul. While he knew that Ginny wouldn't have deliberately misled him, Harry couldn't help but wonder if his lack of information had ever allowed Voldemort to look through his eyes at another time, a time when he felt less emotional turmoil, perhaps.

Ginny sensed Harry's abrupt change in mood, and she looked at him with deep concern. She refused to ask him what was wrong, however, forcing Harry to broach the subject. "Ginny," he began with uncharacteristic gravity, "I thought you said I wouldn't remember it if I was being possessed."

She gasped. Of all the things that Ginny had expected might have been wrong, that had been nowhere on her list. "No, Harry, you wouldn't." She waited a moment, as if she were afraid to of the answer. "Why do you ask?"

Harry heard the uncertainty bordering on fear in her voice, and he felt slightly guilty. He'd never meant to make her afraid of him, but he was still very angry about everything that had happened that night, and some of that anger had bled into his voice. He answered in a monotone, afraid of alienating the one person who'd managed to provide him with comfort. "Voldemort possessed me that night at the Ministry. It was awful. I felt like I was being torn apart. It was torture, worse than the Cruciatus Curse, and I remember every second."

Ginny's face fell and she looked shocked before answering him in a resigned voice. "I'm sorry Harry. I was sure that you would have blank spots like I did... Forgive me?"

Harry didn't know what to think. He should have known that Ginny would not have any answers, but some part of him felt like he had been deceived. He wasn't ready to ask Dumbledore about it, and because he had been unable to ask the one person who might have actually been able to answer his questions, he had blamed Ginny. He knew it wasn't fair, but he couldn't help being bothered by the bad information she had given him. While he was thinking all this, Harry nodded, unconsciously granting the requested forgiveness. He wouldn't remember doing it, but some part of him registered that he had finally made a move to acknowledge their shared experience of the Chamber of Secrets and that she felt bad about her accidental deception.

Something about the guilt Ginny had shown when he told her about his experience had reminded him that he hadn't placed only Sirius in danger on that fateful night. He'd dragged five of his friends with him to a situation where they should have all been killed. They had only managed to survive by luck so fantastically good that it bordered on miraculous, and only Harry had escaped uninjured. The catharsis he had experienced earlier that afternoon was overwhelmed by this realization, and his guilt came crashing back down, augmented by the knowledge that he could easily have led his friends to their deaths as well. He quickly found himself emotionally exhausted, and he couldn't bring himself to be angry with Ginny for her misinformation anymore than he could summon the energy to tell her that it wasn't her fault, that he didn't blame her for her mistake.

Ginny took one look at Harry and knew that she could no longer do anything for him. Her supply of comfort had apparently run dry, and Harry would need time before he would let her help him again. She had no intention of letting him wallow in his grief now that she had finally broken through his barriers, but further aid would have to wait for another day. She stood and took the only option left to her. She beat a tactical retreat.

As Harry watched Ginny walk back to the castle under the lengthening shadows, he slipped into brooding. He missed Sirius terribly, and he again began to blame himself for his godfather's death. The look of shock on Sirius' face as he arched gracefully back into the veil played itself before Harry's mind's eye over and over again, but now a new scene was added to the first. He saw Ginny being struck with a Stunner and slumping bonelessly to the floor, and he couldn't help but fear what might have happened if the spell had been a sickly green instead of a vibrant red.

Ginny Weasley had forced her way into Harry's life that night at the Department of Mysteries when she had refused to be left behind, and he came to the belated realization that he genuinely cared for his friend's sister. Harry knew that he had been a poor friend indeed, and somewhere in the back of his mind, buried beneath layers of grief and torment, he vowed to do better. He would treat Ginny, as she deserved to be treated, as she had always deserved to be treated, with respect, admiration and genuine friendship.

* * *

A/N: I've always been slightly bothered by the way Harry experienced possession compared with how Ginny suggested that it should have felt. It seemed curious to me that he never asked her about it, though I suppose it might have happened sometime in the summer at the Burrow at the beginning of HBP. Rowling suggests that Harry and Ginny spent a lot more time together that summer than we see in the book, so it makes some degree of sense. Still, I think it's appropriate that Ginny's the first person who manages to provide him with a modicum of comfort after Sirius' death, so I've placed this at the end of OoTP, before Harry's conversation with Luna.

Thanks to my beta for a quick turnaround on this story while she was mired in the next chapter of The Long Lonely Road. I'm working on it. I swear.


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